2 TROUBLED HOSPITALS GO FOR NEW SITE

John KassCHICAGO TRIBUNE

The bankrupt Provident Medical Center and the financially troubled Hospital of Englewood plan to create a new medical facility on the South Side to be named Harold Washington Memorial Hospital, officials announced Monday.

The announcement was made by Hilmon Sorey, Provident executive director, who was named project director for the new plan by officials of both hospitals. The new hospital would operate out of what is now Provident Hospital, at 500 E. 51st St.

The plan was seen by some health advocates as a means to defuse pressure from some quarters to formally merge Provident into Cook County Hospital, a move that would transfer control of the black-run institution from its present board to the Cook County Board.

Provident, now in federal Bankruptcy Court, owes about $35 million to the federal government. About $6 million more is owed various companies that provided supplies and services to Provident.

The hospital`s board and its chairman, Edward Gardner, have rejected offers by the County Board to take over operation and control of Provident. The renaming of Provident is a further step to avoid affiliation with County Hospital, according to experts involved in providing health care to the city`s poor.

After filing bankruptcy in July, Provident suspended service and laid off about 400 workers in late September. Before his death, Washington had sought to prevent the closing of the 96-year-old institution-at one time the only Chicago hospital that allowed black doctors to practice.

Under the plan discussed Monday, Provident would be named after the late mayor, and the Hospital of Englewood, at 6000 S. Green St., would be closed sometime after next March. The new hospital then would begin offering limited service in obstetrics and general surgery at that time, Sorey said.

Such an arrangement would allow Provident and Englewood to seek qualified applicants for their house staff. No guarantees were offered that the Englewood staff would be rehired at the new facility.

In the past, Provident`s inability to attract patients from the South Side was attributed to competition with County Hospital and the perception held by health officials and politicians that the quality of care at Provident was sometimes inadequate.

On Dec. 8, board members from Provident and Englewood filed for incorporation under the new name, led by Gardner and Kenneth Grant, Englewood board chairman. Attempts to reach Grant for comment were unsuccessful. The registered agent, according to Sorey, is attorney James Chatz, who is now representing Provident in Bankruptcy Court.

''We have cast the net very wide to attract medical talent in terms of bringing physicians back to the hospital,'' Sorey said, ''and in order to make a statement that we are alive, at a time when others are saying what Provident should or shouldn`t do.''

The proposed arrangement must be endorsed by the federal creditors, including the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Department of Health and Human Services. If the government endorses the plan, Sorey said, then the new hospital would need slightly more than $6 million in startup costs.

''What is being proposed here is not a merger but a new hospital formation,'' Sorey said. ''We will not bring together the two medical staffs of Englewood and Provident. This will be a completely new hospital.''